Does President Obama Truly Want A Second Term Or Is He Just Running Because He Feels Like It's His Duty?

I think he is of two minds, as most of us are regarding difficult issues. I think he can see in the mirror that the office has taken the same toll on him that it has on others. I don’t think he has fun being President the way Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan did. Ironically, I would compare him to both Presidents Bush; men who were dedicated to their causes and willing to serve their country as long as it could use their help. But … also, men who love their families too much to abandon them. I’ve said before, and I wasn’t joking, that when Obama said, “You’re going to have a rough first day in office,” using “are,” in effect, instead of “would, in some alternate universe,” he had a picture in his mind of Romney as President. He shouldn’t have that picture in his mind if he wasn’t at some level thinking how nice it would be to be at home in Chicago every day when his girls came home.

I think he wants to continue in office. I believe he thinks the American people will come to that conclusion. He might be less willing than some Presidents to ask for and fight for the necessary votes.

Yes, I think Obama wants a second term. I think that anyone ambitious enough to rise in politics to the point they can even run for the office, and can fight the grueling battle to win a major party nomination, and can then fight a bitter national campaign and win the election, and can go on to fight and govern for four years, is the kind of person whose ambition and drive for power makes it unlikely they would ever want to give up being the most powerful person on the planet (and I believe absolutely that the U.S. president is the most powerful person on the planet in real terms).

I think that the job is hard, depressing at times, tiring, painful, and creates a weight that sits very heavily upon the occupant of the office every second of every day. So it turns them prematurely gray, it makes them have a shorter life expectancy than average, it digs trenches of worry and stress across their faces, and it makes it hard for them to have real, extended moments of pure enjoyment and relaxation where the problems of the world and threats around us aren’t ever-present on their minds. As a result, they look and often act haggard and unenthused at times, and that might give a false impression that they don’t also revel in the power and the control and the attention and the respect conferred upon them by the office.

But it’s just a false impression, and I think in fact that Obama joins W. Bush and Clinton and Nixon on the list of presidents from the last fifty years who most intensely wanted to keep the job and felt they were doing a good job and could do much better if given a second term unrestrained by “learning the ropes” and worrying about re-election etc.

This question is actually commonly asked about presidents, and is similar to the question “do the Democrats/GOP really want to win?” that comes up sometimes when people speculate that perhaps the party has made a sacrificial nomination with the intention of losing an election and waiting four years to run a better candidate when the odds are better and the national condition might be more likely to improve on their watch etc. But make no mistake — the two major parties NEVER want to lose the White House in an election. Even against a powerful and popular president, and even if it looks like the economy and war etc make governing a terrible possibility, they want it anyway. They crave it, and they’ll fight and spend and try hard to get it. Every time, without a doubt. So keep in mind that when you hear theories about the parties not wanting to win or a president not really wanting to keep the job, it’s speculation and might be interesting to discuss, but in the end it’s never true — they always want to be the most powerful person on the planet, they always want to run the nation. Always.

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